Bruenor shield-rushed a trio of enemies, too quick for them to escape. He felt their legs angle and buckle in front of him as he pressed forward, his axe, alive with flame, cutting a line in front of him.
“Durned good weapon,” Bruenor said, shaking his head, but then he cried out and nearly dropped the enchanted battle-axe when the flame leaping from it took definitive shape, like a living winged creature above the blade, and leaped out from his weapon to engulf a kobold that had broken free in desperate retreat.
Another burst of fire ignited upon his flame-tongued battle-axe, and Bruenor gasped in astonishment before finally solving the riddle. He glanced back over his right shoulder to see Catti-brie calmly pacing him and Drizzt, walking up behind them in all confidence, her eyes half-closed, her lips moving to enact another spell, or to speak with the fire, perhaps.
Farther to the right, Drizzt cut down another kobold, and another.
“Ye’ll not get more than meself!” Bruenor shouted at him, and turned to pursue the next nearest group. He paused, though, and shouted out for his girl. From a side passage came a host of kobolds, bearing down on Catti-brie, who looked all alone and vulnerable. Bruenor swung around, but knew he was too far to help her in time.
“Me girl!” he roared.
The cry of “Me girl!” sounded behind Catti-brie, but she paid it no heed, her focus solely on the sudden and unexpected threat. In came the lead kobold, spear leveled.
With only minimal movement, Catti-brie turned aside of that thrust and as the kobold stumbled by, she chopped it on the back of the neck with her staff, sending it stumbling and tumbling. And so great was her concentration that she continued her spell and was still able to come up and turn left to face the next attacker, leaping inside its swing so that it could not bring its sword to bear.
With one hand, Catti-brie grabbed the back of its scraggly fur, yanking its snapping maw away, while she pointed with her staff tip, the sapphire flaring, and enacted her spell.
The area right in front of her, under the feet of the charging kobolds, slickened with magical grease, and the creatures suddenly were stumbling all about, flailing and falling.
And then, before Catti-brie could deal with the kobold she was grappling, she felt as if a swarm of bees had entered the fray, and indeed that proved an apt description as Athrogate and Ambergris, Fist and Fury, and Connerad Brawnanvil came pounding by, throwing kobolds aside as easily as a heavy stone could crash through a barrier of thin parchment.
The magic of Athrogate’s right-hand morningstar, coated with oil of impact, exploded with a tremendous crash and sent a kobold flying far away, while the dwarf’s other morningstar swept across to crush the skull of a second monster. Beside him, Ambergris worked with great sweeping strikes, launching kobolds into the air two at a time with her huge mace.
But neither of these great warriors, amazing as they were, could hold Catti-brie’s attention as fully as the two young female dwarves from Citadel Felbarr. Connerad rushed up to Catti-brie’s side, but he, too, said nothing, and didn’t bother to blink as he watched the deadly play of Fist and Fury.
Both carried swords, neither bothered with a shield. They came up on a pair of kobolds and one of the sisters-Catti-brie wasn’t sure which was which! — struck out to the side, distracting the kobold in front of her sister, who then rolled around and dived back down behind the legs of the kobolds.
Ahead came the first dwarf with a vicious burst, and the kobolds, reflexively retreating, tripped over the now-kneeling dwarf behind them, and that dwarf popped up fast and powerfully as they pitched over, launching them up higher into the air. She turned, her back to the kobolds, her hand extended, and her sister took it and she yanked her sister by, launching her like a living missile into the receding mob. In came the other dwarf, and side by side the Fellhammer sisters worked as one, sword left up high, sword right down low, so that the kobold between that vise couldn’t duck, couldn’t jump and couldn’t block.
The leading dwarf turned and reached, and her sister took her hand and now it was her turn to fly into the throng, laughing all the while.
And the Fellhammer sisters caught up to Bruenor, and the three moved like intimate old friends, and fought like intimate old friends, who had trained together for all of their lives.
Like a field of tall wheat in front of the sweeping scythe, the kobolds fell all around them.
Behind Catti-brie and Connerad came the rest of the dwarves, turned by Bruenor’s daring charge, shamed now and determined to punish those monsters that had chased them off.
And determined to prove themselves worthy to their king.
There was an old saying in the Realms that “not a dwarf would-could fight like a dwarf angered, but not a dwarf would-could bite like a dwarf shamed.”
So it was then, to the great pain of the kobold clan, swept away in a living tidal wave of fury.
Surrounded now by a wall of dwarves, Catti-brie focused once more on the tendrils of the primordial that coursed around her. She sensed the building, concentrated living energy back among the kobold ranks, and understood it to be bits of living flame encased in a multitude of grenades.
The woman called to those flames through her ring, beckoning to them to awaken, to grow stronger, to extend their reach and break free from their tombs.
In heartbeats, popping noises resounded among the kobold ranks, tiny primordial flames bursting from their encasement, exploding in the midst of the kobold grenadiers.
In short order, the whole of the kobold horde was in full retreat, a huge magma elemental in close pursuit, and a host of tiny flames chasing after that beast in hungry pursuit of the kobold flesh they would bite and burn.
CHAPTER 11
Dahlia ran her fingers along the smooth metal of Kozah’s Needle, trying to use the tangible feel of her weapon to bring her back to stability, to a time when she knew a better life.
Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she believed that she had once known that better life.
She thought of running down a hill, toward a rocky gorge, a drow-a drow friend! — outdistancing her, leaping with amazing balance and grace from stone to rise to stone.
She felt the wind on her face-the wind! She felt herself tumbling, but it was not frightening, for she controlled this movement, her brilliant vault bringing her around to do battle. .
“How many tendays?” a voice said, and for a moment, Dahlia thought it a memory, until the voice-High Priestess Saribel-spoke again. “How many tendays have you left to draw breath, darthiir?” she asked, and Dahlia opened her eyes to see the woman, resplendent in her spidery laced gown, all purple and black, beautiful and deadly all at once. So beautiful, so alluring. That was part of their magic, and how could Dahlia resist?
How could she think herself worthy?
“My husband is alive,” Saribel said, and Dahlia couldn’t begin to understand what that might even mean, let alone who Saribel might be talking about.
“Tiago Baenre,” Saribel said, and Dahlia wondered if that name should mean something to her.
An image of mighty Szass Tam flashed in her mind, and she nearly swooned from the overwhelming, almost divine power she felt from him, as well as the incredible malignancy-and Dahlia was sure that she should know who that was. Alarms sounded in her thoughts, echoing and winding, wrapping back under the pile of writhing worms that was her train of thought.
“Tiago has been found, alive and well with that Doum’wielle creature,” Saribel said, and she might as well have been talking in the tongue of myconids, for now even the words made no sense to Dahlia.
“When Tiago returns, we together will claim this House Do’Urden for our own. We will be fast rid of you, witch, and I will claim the title of matron mother. Matron Mother Baenre has come to trust me now, and needs not your echo on the Ruling Council, when my own voice would be so much more helpful.”
She moved closer, and Dahlia thought she should lash out at the drow, though she couldn’t figure out quite how to make her arms do that.
“We will make of you a drider, lovely Dahlia,” Saribel said, almost cooing the words, and she raised her hand to gently stroke the elf’s face. Lightly, teasingly. And how beautiful was she!
Dahlia closed her eyes, the energy of Saribel’s touch filling her body, reverberating through her as a moment of pure sensation and growing ecstasy. She heard herself breathing more heavily, lost herself in the vibrations of the touch, so soft and teasing, moving within her and multiplying.
Saribel slapped her across the face, and in a moment of clarity Dahlia thought that fitting. So beautiful, so alluring.
Yet so horribly wretched and dangerous.
“I will taunt you and torture you for a hundred years,” Saribel promised. “When my husband Tiago returns with the head of Drizzt Do’Urden, your time of comfort will end.”
Dahlia couldn’t make out much of that, but that name! Oh, that name!
Drizzt Do’Urden.
Drizzt Do’Urden!
She knew that name, knew that drow, her lover, her love!
She had felt so safe in his arms, and so wild under his touch. She had found peace there. . Effron! He had brought her to Effron, her son, her child she thought lost. .
A tidal wave of emotions rolled over Dahlia then, a flood of memories, all jumbled of course, but relaying so many different emotions all too clearly. She burst into tears, shoulders bobbing in sobs. They had done this. These drow had murdered Effron!
Saribel laughed at her, cackled wildly, taking great pleasure, in thinking her words had terrified the elf.
But Dahlia paid her no heed, had not even recognized many of her words, the sounds nonsensically arranged in Dahlia’s ears.
None of them mattered anyway, except for two: Drizzt. Do’Urden.
“Drizzt Do’Urden,” she silently mouthed, and she held on desperately to those sounds, to that word if it was a word, to that name if it was a name.
She knew it mattered.
Through all the winding worms within her thoughts, Dahlia became confident that she knew that the name-yes, it was name! — and that it, Drizzt Do’Urden, mattered. So she held it and repeated it as a mantra, a litany against the winding courses of a broken mind.